


Breakfast for Dinner

by Passions



Series: Tarnished Hearts [13]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-26
Updated: 2013-07-26
Packaged: 2017-12-21 09:51:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/898890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Passions/pseuds/Passions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kathryn tries to play matchmaker and goes out so Belle and Ciarin can have a night in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breakfast for Dinner

Once Kathryn had come to the conclusion that she and Ciarin were ready to split from each other and that they would both survive and that Belle was absolutely perfect for him, she had been thinking of ways to leave them alone together, in hopes that something might happen.

Tonight had been a perfect excuse. As far as Belle and Ciarin was concerned, she was going to visit Mary Margaret. They had no reason to know the public school schedule; Kathryn herself only knew because Mary Margaret had mentioned it in a phone conversation a couple of days earlier.

Ostensibly, Kathryn was going to visit Mary Margaret at the local school’s Parent/Teacher Night so that she could get an idea of how the school ran and what sorts of activities they had for the children.

And if a certain handsome gym teacher happened to be in attendance, well he was a teacher, it would only be natural.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After waving goodbye to Kathryn, Belle had retired to her room to read until dinner. She ended up racing down to the kitchen in her flannel pajama bottoms and a tank top some time later when the smoke alarm went off.

She found Ciarin snarling at the machine and waving a kitchen towel at it while he held his weight mostly on his good leg, cane providing some balance.

She hurried past him and shut off the stove, yanking the frying pan and wincing at what appeared to some very very burnt scrambled eggs. She dumped the ruined food into the garbage and moved to the sink, swirling some cold water around the pan until it was cool enough for her to wash off.

Ciarin was usually a very good cook, which was exhibited by the dish of breakfast sausages and plate of pancakes that already sat on the table, along with a dish of cut up fruit which made her smile. It was still one of her favourite things to eat.

"What happened?" She asked.

He blushed and looked away. “I might have gotten a little carried away with cooking the eggs."

Belle snorted. “Clearly. Did you get distracted? They cook very quickly, you know."

He nodded. “I do know. I just - really wanted to make sure they weren’t raw at all. Because, you know," he twisted his hand in the air, “Salmonella."

Belle smiled. He was so careful with her and Kathryn, so afraid that he would do something wrong and it would hurt either them or the babies. Perhaps he worried a bit too much, but she could hardly fault him for that. He just cared about them all.

For example, making her breakfast for dinner when Kathryn was away because he knew she liked pancakes and Kathryn didn’t, and because he knew she wasn’t particularly interested in eating red meat at the moment.

"Well, that’s alright." she said. “Everything else looks wonderful."

He smiled and went to pull out her chair for her, asking what she wanted with her pancakes. When she decided just to eat them with some of the fruit already on the table he smiled and put the kettle on the stove to boil before sitting down across from her.

Dinner was more awkward than Belle had been expecting. She’d been living with Ciarin and Kathryn for just barely shy of five months now and they were all quite comfortable with each other.

But now, here alone with him, the memory of what they had done on New Year’s, falling asleep against him during Titanic, how his hand felt caressing her belly, how much she liked all of it and craved more, it was all bearing down on her, filling up the air between them until it was almost too dense to breathe in. And it seemed he felt the same thing.

The conversation was stilted, but the food was delicious. Ciarin really was a good cook when he wasn’t so paranoid about undercooking it that he ended up overcooking it.

Partway through the meal the kettle whistled and Ciarin went to make the tea, carrying the pot over to the table and pouring into the tea cups she hadn’t noticed were already there. She leaned back in her chair and sighed in pleasure as she raised the cup to her lips.

Her eyes widened suddenly and she gasped as she felt a fluttering in her belly - a fluttering she knew was the baby and not some reaction to the food. Her grip on the tea cup loosened in her wonder and it dropped, bouncing off of her stomach before crashing to the floor. She yelped and jumped to her feet as the hot liquid hit her skin, yanking her shirt away from herself.

"Belle?" Ciarin was frantic next to her. 

"I-I’m okay, I think I just burned myself a bit."

"Here, careful, love." He lead her around the broken pieces of china and over to the sink, returning to the table to fetch a chair for her to sit in before turning the cold water on and running a clean wash cloth under the stream.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Gold turned back to Belle his heart stopped in his chest. She was seated in the chair he had brought next to him, and she had pulled her tank top up to rest under her breasts. He’d been able to see her belly grow this whole time, obviously, living with her as he did. But to see the bump of their child, his child - no, their child - covered in nothing but her soft skin? That was something he might never have expected.

It brought a soft ache to his heart; it brought a rather different ache to … a different part of his anatomy, but he ignored that entirely.

Shaking himself out of the daze he’d let himself fall into - she was hurting, she needed him, no time to fantasize - he placed the cold, wet cloth over the burn, on the upper curve of her stomach, just below where her tank top sat, rolled up. She sighed in relief and he allowed himself to exhale as well.

He re-wet the cloth a few more times before she told him she was fine and smiled. He led her into the living room and insisted she sit down, hurrying to the bathroom and looking for the Aloe Vera he knew Kathryn kept somewhere. 

When he returned to the living room a few minutes later, Aloe Vera in hand, Belle had turned the lamp beside the couch on in addition to the overhead light that was already on and she was focused on her stomach. Probably on the burn.

He seated himself next to her, hoping he wasn’t invading her space. “I’ve found some Aloe Vera cream, if you’d like."

Belle smiled up at him. “That would be good, I think." But she made no move to take the lotion from him, so he opened it and scooped some up with his fingers, bending forward slightly to rub it over the red patch he could see forming.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Hmmm?"

"When you dropped the tea. Was something wrong?"

He looked up to see her blushing. “Oh, no. I just - uhm, felt the baby move. For the first time."

He looked back up at her and he knew he was staring in wonder, but what else could he do? Every time something new happened, every time there was further proof that his child was living and growing inside of her, he fell further for her and the family he imagined having with her.

And now she had felt the baby. There was a reciprocal connection between the two them. His mind was entirely empty of words.

"I have’t felt it move since then, and it was barely movement, just a sort of fluttering. But maybe soon we’ll be able to feel it kick!" She was beaming.

Gold just nodded his head, still completely out of words to reply with. She had said ‘we’. And while he knew she probably meant the two of them as well as Kathryn and the Doctor and probably the rest of the bloody town, hope was fluttering in his heart and he couldn’t keep himself from holding tightly to it.


End file.
